The Global House Church Movement

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THE VISION

THE ONCE AND FUTURE CHURCH

DO YOU NEED TO READ THIS BOOK?

There is currently a global shift going on in the church. There is a new Christianity on the horizon. The Spirit of God is birthing the global house church movement. This phenomenon is sweeping across many parts of our planet in places like China, India, and Cuba, to name a few, and is gaining momentum in North America.

Research on missionary work around the globe demonstrates that the most rapidly growing church planting and evangelistic movements today utilize house-sized churches and cell groups. These efforts are outstripping more traditional approaches to evangelism, church growth, and church planting.

Do you consider yourself a Great Commission Christian? Do you have a deep desire to utilize a simple but effective model for reaching the nations for Christ? Do you want to reach your friends and your nation with an approach to church life and church planting that is biblical, simple, natural, inexpensive, duplicatable, intimate, and a breeding ground for new leaders?

If so, you need to read this book.

It is rooted in biblical principles, historical perspectives, and personal experiences. It offers you practical and strategic steps to help you get involved in changing the world for Christ, starting right in your own home.

Because some involved in this movement are doing so merely out of reaction to the flaws of traditional churches, their literature is sometimes overly negative and unbalanced. Therefore, this book attempts to provide a biblical, thought-provoking, balanced, and yet revolutionary guide for those currently involved in house churches as they seek to live out grassroots New Testament-style Christianity. Lastly, the book is also a training manual for current and potential house church leaders with questions and interactive exercises at the end of each chapter for use in a leaders huddle.

RECAPTURING THE LOST VISION

The Nature of the Church

Picture if you will, spread out all over the city, small groups of people committed to getting to know each other and God. These groups meet primarily in homes, but also in offices, apartments, and meeting rooms on the local university campus. They have become known as ‘house churches’.

Rather than one-man shows, meetings are participatory and interactive family-type gatherings where everyone has the opportunity to contribute something. They gather frequently to explore issues of faith, family, the media, culture, suffering, relationships, career, and social action. They may be working on projects, studying the Bible, praying, crying, eating, sharing the Lord’s Supper, baptizing new believers, experiencing miraculous signs and wonders, and playing.

These house churches are not led or hosted by traditional clergy but by average folks who have a deepening love for Christ and other people. They have discovered that the secret of life is to love God and others and to become more like Christ. These folks simply want to rediscover the power and person of Jesus Christ in community and as they engage in mission, just as his early followers did.

No church buildings, professional clergy, highly polished services, or expensive programs are required or desired.

The Mission of the Church

So powerful have people’s experiences with each other and Jesus been, that many neighbors, co-workers, family members, and friends, who may not even believe in God and may be suspicious of church, are wanting to get in on the action. These groups sometimes grow and get so big that they multiply themselves into new groups that are strategically placed in new neighborhoods, commercial and business settings, and educational institutes. The leaders of these groups empower members with training, resources, and prayers, emphasizing a few essentials rather than a long list of requirements in order to reach out to their communities more effectively.

The Boundary of the Church

The unity of the body of Christ is evident to everyone in the way these Christians work together as a single cohesive citywide church. They do not allow denominational boundaries or traditions to prevent partnering together as one citywide body. To network together, these house churches meet house-to-house, organize citywide events for teaching and worship, and have mobile workers that circulate from group-to-group and city-to-city like blood through arteries. Leaders of these groups from across the city also meet regularly as a team to pray, exchange resources, and coordinate their efforts to strategically plant new house churches—new lighthouses of hope—in every neighborhood of their city, like yeast working its way through and saturating dough.

The Expansion of the Church

As new leaders emerge and are released to follow their calling to start new multiplying house churches and move like circuit riders from city-to-city, without even knowing it, they are swept up into a movement—their movement, God’s movement—which will touch many generations to come. This is part of an emerging reformation of the church in their generation, an underground revolution of faith that will transform their city and blaze across their region, their nation, and the uttermost parts of the earth.

WHAT IS A HOUSE CHURCH?

Some readers may be asking, what exactly is a house church, anyway? There are some surface similarities—such as size and location—between traditional churches and cell churches on the one hand and New Testament-style house churches on the other. But, there is also a vast ocean of difference that needs to be recognized.¹

Traditional Churches

Churches in this category can be described as ‘cathedral’ churches where prayer or Bible study groups are merely optional and are not the main program offered. The main thing is the large group Sunday morning service. Any small groups usually have highly programmed and pre-planned meetings. Traditional churches are also very centralized in their leadership. So, this is like a bicycle wheel hub (Sunday morning large group and a centralized leadership group) with a few spokes (small groups and lay leadership) protruding out. Put another way, this is like a ‘church with small groups’.

Cell Churches

In cell churches, there is an equal emphasis on ‘cells’ and traditional Sunday morning worship services, often called ‘celebrations’. Cell groups are often outreach focused and grow within a year or two to the point of multiplying into two groups. Meetings are usually pre-planned and programmed. Moreover, cell groups belong to a larger system involving a traditional pyramid leadership structure with a senior pastor at the top, so that cells have limited authority from the senior pastor or the church board. Although less centralized than traditional churches and with a much greater degree of every-member involvement, cell churches are basically a halfway point between traditional churches and biblical house church networks. So, this can be thought of as a hub with many spokes coming out from it. This arrangement can be described as a ‘church of small groups’.

New Testament-style House Churches

These clusters of people are different from cell groups in four significant ways. Although there are exceptions, the following comments accurately describe most house churches.

First, house churches are an attempt to get back to early grassroots Christianity as found in the New Testament. The term ‘house church’ is simply a convenient label that involves a much broader effort to see the pattern and power of the early church fully restored. This involves much more than just small groups meeting in living rooms. It means big changes in the practical ways we do church. Cell churches, however, often attempt to add cell groups as just another program to an otherwise traditional church structure.

Second, house churches are fully functioning churches in themselves. So, they engage in a full range of activities like the Lord’s Supper, baptism, marriage, burial, exercising of church discipline, and charting their own course. They are facilitated by a co-equal team of unpaid ‘elders’ and meet in house-sized groups for participatory meetings involving prayer and worship, Bible study and discussion, mentoring and outreach, mutual ministry and healing, as well as food and fun. Cell groups, however, are not fully released to be the church in many of these matters, but seek permission or help from a minister, a board, or some vertical chain of command.

Third, house church meetings are open and spontaneous. These participatory meetings allow everyone’s spiritual gifts to be used, rather than being focused only on the ‘teaching’ gift. This gives the Holy Spirit a chance to show up in unplanned ways. Most cell groups, though, have a pre-planned agenda about what will happen and have Bible study or book study as the dominant component.

Fourth, house churches are self-governing. Therefore, they do not seek permission for their activities from a formal paid minister, nor are they part of a centralized church system. Consequently, they more easily adapt to persecution, growth, and change, but may also be more vulnerable to bad theology and behavior. So, these groups form peer networks for health and growth, like a spider web of interlocking strands. Even as part of networks, they retain their self-governing nature to deal with their own internal affairs. Cell groups, however, are dependent on a larger church pyramid system.

In summary, biblical house churches can be explained by the principle that ‘church is small groups.’

A GROWING GLOBAL REVOLUTION

Believe it or not, what you have just read above is basically a description of what the early church of the first three centuries was like; it was a ‘living room’ movement. This was the church that upset the world (Acts 17:6, NASB) in the first century and that forced the mighty Roman Empire to legalize Christianity after a three hundred year showdown. It is also the church that tens of millions of Christians are rediscovering today in places like China, India, Africa, Cambodia, Cuba, England, and Western Europe, and, yes, even in North America. Some traditional churches are even beginning to sell their buildings and reorganize as a web of house churches to more effectively reach their city with the great news of Jesus Christ.

During Missionfest Toronto—a Christian trade show where denominations, missions groups, seminaries, and other ministries promote their work—our house church network had a booth with the title banner reading, ‘Houses that Change the World: Join the Worldwide House Church Movement’. A visitor to our booth observed that we were really selling an idea to the Christian public. He was right. We were the only group there that was not promoting an organization, but rather a vision and a movement. And that’s exactly what this book is about. It is about recapturing the lost vision of what the church once was, what many are rediscovering today, and how the church could more biblically and effectively reach the billions who have not yet personally encountered Jesus Christ. If this vision excites you, dear reader, as much as it excites me, then the following pages should prove to be a very stimulating journey.

My prayer is that God will use this manifesto to gently but surely shake and shift your paradigms, challenge you to become a spiritual revolutionary, and intelligently and practically coach you in joining the global house church movement. To those brave souls who choose to pick up this torch, I salute you. Godspeed.

QUESTIONS FOR GROUP REFLECTION

1. The Big Picture. What part of the ‘Recapturing the Lost Vision’ section excited, concerned, or confused you?

2. Organizing the Church. Can you explain the organizational difference between a traditional church, cell-group church, and house church? What do you think are the pros and cons of each?

3. Linking House Churches Together. What are three ways described in this chapter in which house churches can be linked together? Can you think of any other possibilities?

GROUP EXERCISE

Can you see the difference? Break your discussion group into three smaller groups. Each group is responsible to draw a diagram that describes the organizational nature either of a traditional church, a cell church, or a New Testament-style house church network. Come back together and take turns explaining your diagram to the other two groups.

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PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

MY JOURNEY ALONG THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

Stories. We crave them because they connect the three strands of past, present, and future into one strong cord we can hang our entire weight from. Some challenge us. Some comfort us. Some are exciting, while others are pretty ordinary. But, each story is unique. I’d like to tell you about the stops I’ve made along my own road toward the global house church movement.

ENCOUNTERING CHRIST AND HIS PEOPLE

I was born in Canada in 1969 and raised in a nominal Christian environment in the Serbian Orthodox Church. My immigrant parents, though, instilled in me a belief in God, prayer, and personal moral responsibility. But God was still just a vague idea.

When I was fifteen my younger sister brought home a pocket New Testament that she got at school from the Gideon Bible Society. Over the next year, as I read about the life, teachings, death, resurrection, and claims of Christ, I made a decision to surrender the rest of my life to following him. No bells. No whistles. No skywriting. My sister also made the same decision at about that time. This created some significant tensions at home with the folks, to the point where we had to read the Bible and pray very secretively in our rooms. My parents were worried that we’d join some sort of cult.

During the next few years, I never attended an evangelical church due to family circumstances. But, there were some Christian TV shows that I watched and some fellow Christian students at my highschool. There were about six of us who used to get together every week for a small group Bible study, the next three years being very foundational for me. One of the main lessons I learned during this time was my need for some form of Christian community to empower me to follow Christ more closely.

UNIVERSITY YEARS AND BIBLE STUDY GROUPS

In 1987, I enrolled at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. I immediately got plugged in with the Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC) group where I was challenged to grow in my personal prayer life and in personal evangelism. The CCC staff guy, Dave, intentionally discipled me over the next two years in a one-on-one and small group context, imparting to me a vision for how God could use my life for something bigger. I definitely consider him one of my three spiritual fathers. At the same time I was building an evangelistic small group on the side with a few other classmates, some Christian, some not.

As CCC in Canada reorganized itself in the late 1980s, they shut down their ministry at McMaster, so I got involved with the Navigator group in 1989. For the next four years Don—who was the Navigator staff guy and my second spiritual dad—deliberately mentored me one-on-one, challenged me to get involved with and eventually lead a men’s Bible study, and invited me to join the Navigator student leadership team. On the side, because of my evangelistic bent, I was still carrying on an evangelistic Bible study with some classmates.

I also